[BRIEF NOTE] The Economist on the Horn of Africa

[rfmcdonald]

Slate has pointed to a recent survey article by the Economist on the parlous situation in the Horn of Africa ("The path to ruin"). The author argues that rapid population growth--the region's population is projected to nearly double between now and 2030--has combined with the degradation of the fragile environment to produce a general humanitarian catastrophe. The worst effects are apparently in the "borderlands," in the regions on the Kenya, Ethiopian, and Somalian frontiers that are home to pastoralists, mainly ethnic Somalis; these people, increasingly impoverished and often at odds with their national governments, might provide the tinder for wider conflict. Things aren't getting better.

Even with the fear of greater bloodshed, the main problem in the borderlands remains the stark environmental fact that there are simply too many people and too many animals and not enough grass. Some experts, such as Lammert Zwaagstra, an adviser to the European Union, believe that without outside intervention whole stretches of the Horn will come to look as wretched as Darfur in Sudan, with its people fighting over water, grazing, firewood and other scarce natural resources.

Mr Zwaagstra has been studying the borderlands for decades. Not known as an alarmist, he is now pressing the red alert button. There are too many cattle for the capacity of the land, he says, but too few to sustain the community. Population growth is part of the problem; drought is another. The Horn appears to be drying up. This may or may not be a result of climate change, but experts give warning that if the predicted increase in temperatures does come about, if only by one or two degrees, the borderlands will become unsustainable.

Rainfall is even less predictable. The drought cycle has shrunk from once every eight years to once every three years, according to the American government's Famine Early Warning System. "That means no recovery time for the cattle, for the land, for the people," says Mr Zwaagstra. And the changes are happening at breakneck speed.

Even the WFP admits that their delivery of aid is no more than sticking plaster. Others are even more critical. Food aid is like "crack", says one Nairobi-based aid chief: "It is addictive and creates an unhealthy dependency." Well, maybe. But any attempt to swing the balance from humanitarian aid to development aid comes against the imperative of saving the starving today. The scale of potential misery is becoming clearer. Rough estimates of famine victims in the next few years range upwards from 10m.

The risk of whole areas of the Horn collapsing with famine and irreversible environmental damage, urged on by jihadist and tribal clashes, is clear cause for alarm. A first task, if Somalia is to be salvaged, is to support a moderate and competent government there. That will be hard, to put it at its mildest. The transitional government is moderate but inept: the Islamists well-organised but given to jihadist tendencies.